


Raspberries and Writing Exercises

by Caped-Ace (PsychopompSentinel), PsychopompSentinel



Category: Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Superman: The Animated Series
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, My bat is emotional and he hates it, Pining, Requited Love, Requited Unrequited Love, So does Clark, Valentine's Day Fluff, Valentine's day drabble for my Beloved, but i love it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 12:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychopompSentinel/pseuds/Caped-Ace, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychopompSentinel/pseuds/PsychopompSentinel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Write it out on paper and you'll feel better," he said. "Easy peasie," he said.</p><p>Bruce may love Tim with everything he has, but at the end of the day he really shouldn't be taking advice of the heart from a young boy who only read about love in novels and comic books.<br/> </p><p>Or maybe he should listen to him more often?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raspberries and Writing Exercises

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yuko](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Yuko).



 

“ _There isn’t a lot I could say about you that hasn’t been written or spoken aloud already,”_ he wrote carefully, each letter articulate and perfectly rounded. _“But even if you’ve heard it all before, I’ve been told that if I express myself openly in some small way, even a letter you’ll never see, that it would be good for me. A way to get my ‘romantic frustration out’, Tim says._ ”

Bruce stared down at the crisp, clean sheet of paper, the light from his nightstand causing shadows to slowly dance across its surface. He shifted his weight so that he was leaning more comfortably against the headboard of hia bed, readjusting the book against his knee that he had the pending letter pressed against.

This was far out of his comfort zone, this sort of thing, but the holiday was almost at its end and Bruce felt remiss in his lack of doing anything for the man he’d somehow fallen for. Clark didn’t even know it, but Bruce felt obligated to do something all the same. And it wasn’t as if he was ever going to actually see the letter. This was just to affirm his feelings, his thoughts, and, however discreetly, put just a little more love for Clark out into the world.

And maybe Tim was right. Maybe this would help to sate his heart of the one thing it couldn’t have.

Yeah, right.

Sighing softly to himself, Bruce lifted his other knee and used his legs as a makeshift table, narrowing his eyes at the sheet of paper and working through his convoluted mind, and lovesick heart, to carry on with this seemingly useless exercise.

“ _There was much I’d heard with regards to the famous ‘Superman’, even in a city as cynical and uncaring to such hopeful, bright things as Gotham. The flying and the super-strength for instance, but more than the abilities, more than the alien origins, what I found hard to believe was the benevolence of you. I couldn’t swallow the idea that someone with all your power, all your gifts, could have all of that and still be kind, still be gentle._

 _Living the life I have I couldn’t imagine anything like that existing. Then I met you, and we were at odds at the start; for awhile I actually found myself thinking that I’d been right, that of course you weren’t what people thought. I suppose it didn’t help that the first thing I did was antagonize you. But despite what people think of me I’m just as quick to realize I’m wrong, and change my perspective, as I can be to judge. Even more quickly I found myself interested in you, wanting to be closer to the light that you just seem to give off when all I find myself surrounded in is darkness_.”

Bruce let out a breath, deep and all encompassing, running a hand through his hair as he glanced out the window for a moment, staring into the night sky he could see past his crimson, velvet curtains. Darkness certainly went hand-in-hand with his life, whether it be the entity that was Batman, or all the black, ominous layers to his self that he kept hidden away from the world and wrapped around his heart like a shield.

A shield that Clark Kent had so easily slipped passed, navigating the chinks and blemishes as if he knew all along how to get inside.

That was what light did though, right? It penetrated the darkness with such ease and grace that it consumed it without even a second thought. Much like Clark had become the one thing that Bruce always thought about, even when five hundred other things were on his mind.

It was almost like a sickness.

Huffing out a dismissive gust of air, Bruce told himself to concentrate, instead of waxing poetic about his emotions over Clark where it did him no good. This letter was supposed to ease him of this burden of love, not make it worse.

“ _You’d probably think me crazy if you knew about this,”_ he continued to write, _“perhaps even see my feelings as nothing more than self-serving and nonsensical, and I wouldn’t say you were wrong. After all, what could you yourself possibly gain from a mess like me loving you like this? If anything, you’d be the one with the burden of having me feel this way, not me._

_That’s right. I’m the inconvenience, not you._

_And while I think I know you well enough to say that you wouldn’t act like I was a nuisance for carrying this torch, and that you would most certainly let me down softly, I can’t help but dread the thought of having you know what I think when I look at you. The way my skin seems to heat up just standing close to you, or how I sometimes lose focus at League meetings because I get lost trying to name the color of blue your eyes are (there is no name for that hue, I’ve looked), or even how I’ve sometimes come home after a terrible night of patrol and the only thing that can keep me sane, keep me going in these vicious circles Gotham puts me through, is holding the torn shred of your cape I still have as tightly as I can, remembering you continue to exist. That if nothing else you being alive keeps_ me _alive_.”

"God damn it..." Bruce whispered, putting the letter aside for a moment to curl in on himself, hugging his knees to his chest to hide his shamed expression.

His heart was pounding, a loud drumming in his ears that drowned out the unbearable silence of his oversized bedroom. He thought he had it under control, that his feelings could be contained and, eventually, snuffed out, but writing everything out on paper, he discovered, only forced the intensity of his love to come rushing out to the surface. If he himself could barely stand what he felt, how could he ever expect Clark to face these emotions and not want to run as far away from him as possible?

This was too much.

"Clark...I’m sorry," he whimpered, a piteous sound entrapped in the cocoon of his enclosed body. If only the League could see him now—they wouldn’t want such a pathetic person on their team. They wouldn’t want someone so greedy as to desire the most powerful man on Earth.

Who would?

"Bruce..." the soft, deep tone in his ear made Bruce flinch, having foolishly forgotten that his comm. was always on in case of emergencies. It was only a one-way frequency though, no one should have been able to hear him.

Of course, that meant nothing if your hearing was super, did it?

Straightening out his back and brushing the wrinkles out of his tank top, Bruce cleared his throat and pressed against the small comm. in his ear, opening up a two-way channel. He only hoped he sounded as composed as he wished he really was.

"What did I tell you about using real names on this channel?" he said flatly, momentarily proud of how normal he presented.

With something of a smile in his voice, probably from amusement (was his response so predictable?), Clark replied, “To not do it. But I always say right back that you’re the one who made these things so I can trust no one’s listening in.”

Bruce swore to whomever was paying attention that, if Clark could see the way his cheeks reddened because of super-sight, he’d break his number one rule and kill someone. Namely himself. “You shouldn’t be so trusting. I'm just human, so I’m hardly perfect,” he said with a small sigh.

"I could argue that, but I won’t." Clark’s voice sounded oddly gentle as he said this, causing something in Bruce’s chest to contract.

Although he wanted to question that, he really, truly did, Bruce asked instead, “Is something wrong? Do I need to suit up?”

"No!" Clark responded immediately, sounding a little stressed, Bruce supposed, only adding to the man’s curiosity as to why he’d been contacted. "No, I just..." Clark’s voice trailed off for a tense moment, and when he spoke again it was as if he’d reached an octave that curled right around Bruce’s spine.

"Are you alright?"

The question threw Bruce through a loop, wondering what could make Clark ask such a thing— _and then it hit him_. “Why?” he asked quietly, trying his best to sound calm when his face looked worried and red.

Clark was silent for a few minutes, as if hesitant, and then he said, “I heard you apologize for some reason, and I thought—I thought maybe you were...crying.”

Well, while he’d embarrassingly had been on the brink of doing so, Bruce had managed to keep his emotions at bay just enough to not break down, but he certainly felt like doing so right then. Although jumping out the bedroom window would be easier and much more painless.

"That was just—" Bruce cut himself off, finding he had no way to explain the whispered apology away, growing more flustered and regretful of ever starting this stupid letter by the second. "I wasn’t crying," he eventually muttered out miserably, putting his freehand over his face as if to hide from this conversation.

This wasn’t like him at all. Or, at least, the him he dared to show the world, and the irony was not lost on him that all it took to turn Bruce Wayne, no, _the Batman_ into a mess of a human being was one man. One corn-bred, genuine, impossible man. It was as if these feelings had regressed him to some sappy teenager still trying to come to terms with their hormones, sensitive to anything and everything.

Or maybe he was just finally being honest with himself for once, and trying like hell to fight that honesty.

"Bruce," Clark said, the name carrying an odd weight to it that Bruce couldn’t describe. "I’ll be right there."

"No I—" Bruce tried to say, but the channel was closed off and all that was left was a buzzing silence, the only sound being that of Bruce’s insides twisting themselves into nervous knots.

Though that twisted heart of his almost stopped altogether when a light tapping came from his bedroom window.

"You’ve got to be joking," Bruce intoned, unable to move for the briefest of moments out of—was it fear? Disbelief? He wasn’t sure, but it had made him as still as a grave, which a part of him wished he was inside of right now rather than face Clark.

"Are you going to open the window or do I have to sneak into your house at super speed?" came the muffled voice of Superman floating outside, his silhouette framed by the moonlight pouring in through the spaces between the leaves of the trees.

Cursing the day he was born as a human, and not something simpler, like a rock or a grain of sand, Bruce mentally punched himself in the face and regained his composure, at least outwardly, by pure willpower (John would’ve been proud, or probably just amused at his expense). Slipping out of bed, his body so attuned to stealth that his feet didn’t even make a sound as he moved across the room, Bruce unlatched the window and gently swung it open, half hoping, in the time he hadn’t been watching Clark out of the corner of his eye, that the other man had gotten impatient and left.

No such luck.

That was unsurprising though; Clark could be both obnoxiously impatient and the most patient person in the world. Bruce supposed it just depended on Clark’s mood. What was surprising was that Clark wasn’t dressed as Superman, or even Clark Kent from the Daily Planet, but instead a sort of combination of the two.

For some reason it struck a chord with Bruce, as if the other man was saying ‘ _I came as myself, no personas or masks, but the real me_ ’. He had to wonder if this is what it felt like to watch Bruce Wayne act serious and wear a simple turtleneck and jeans, instead of throwing on a perfectly tailored, Armani suit and pretend to drink the night away with a model or two on his arm. Funny how just being yourself was something to consider a shock in their lives.

Touching down inside Bruce’s bedroom gently, Clark was silent as he watched Bruce shut the window and draw the curtains in slow, careful movements, the billionaire completely aware of being scrutinized in a way that only Clark could manage. He felt those unnaturally blue eyes burning holes into his back, and perhaps what unnerved him was that they could do so outside a metaphor if the other man wished it.

Or maybe it was because Bruce wanted him to leave those marks, to put something on his body that only Clark could create.

Clenching the curtain tightly for a moment and shutting his eyes, Bruce pushed down his unwanted desire and reprimanded himself, only turning around to face Clark when he was certain he appeared alright.

Little did he know that the look on his face, the one Clark studied with an expression of poorly masked empathy and frustration, was absolutely miserable in every subtle way imaginable. It was the subtlety that made it all the more striking a look, however.

Taking a few steps closer to him, causing Bruce to tightly curly his hands into fists to stop himself from doing...something, Clark’s voice was both a balm to his misery and a catalyst for more to come as he said, “Bruce, I know something is wrong and you won’t tell me, you never do, but you have to understand how this face—” Clark reached up without fear, clasping either side of Bruce’s face and igniting the flesh beneath his touch, “—clearly tells me that something isn’t right.”

Looking the saddest Bruce could recall ever seeing him, Clark quietly said, “Please tell me what’s going on. It kills me to see you like this.”

“ _It kills me more to_ be _like this. To know that you’d pull away, turn your back on me, and fly right back out that window if I explained what the hell’s wrong with me_ ,” Bruce thought morosely, a little, wretched sound escaping his slightly agape lips as he lowered his head. “I can’t,” was all he said after a long, painful stretch of silence, that betrayal of a noise hanging in the air as if it were the sword of Damocles.

Desperate, Clark pleaded, “If you would just tell me I might be able to help—!”

"You can’t!" Bruce shouted, pushing against Clark’s chest harshly enough that, despite his indestructible disposition, the Kryptonian moved with the pressure. With both his hands resting against Clark’s shirt, the composure he’d tried so hard to keep shattered to a messy pile at his feet, Bruce’s fingers digging into the soft cotton of the other man’s clothes as his feelings spilled from his lips like a Judas Kiss.

"You can’t help because you’re the reason I let myself get this way!” Bruce declared fervently at the floor, his eyes tightly screwed shut as if what was happening would stop if he just couldn’t see it play out. “I’ve worked so hard to be what I am, to keep it up, but at times it gets so bleak and so hopeless and so god damn evil that I can hardly stand to look at the world the next day—let alone at myself. It used to be enough that I could save one person, or even just get Alfred or Tim to smile on days I couldn’t patrol, but I’m suffocating in the dark, drowning in it, and meeting you has been the only thing I’ve found that has given me enough light in my life to keep living...”

Loosening his white-knuckled grip, his expression softening with the fatigue that poured out from his tired and beaten soul, Bruce opened his slate-blue eyes and found his vision blurred with tears, the warped and jumbled sight of his feet oddly placating, almost. To his dismay he could feel himself trembling. Refusing to look up, especially now that his face was a moistened, flushed mess, Bruce whispered, “But now I’ve gone from one torture to the next as I can’t breathe without speaking your name, can’t blink without seeing your face, can’t sleep without dreaming of a world where I was worthy of you...

Now I’m drowning in the light that is you and I never want to come up for air.”

The silence was palpable and felt as if it had stopped time itself, giving Bruce’s heart the time to sink to the bottom of his stomach in despair, merely waiting for the sound of disgust, or hate, or dismissal to come from Clark and end this horrible moment.

It never came.

Instead, just as Bruce’s hands began to pull away, Clark gently grasped those hands and brought them up to rest against his bowed forehead, causing Bruce, however reluctantly, to finally look up and see what was happening. What he saw didn’t make any sense.

Clark was blushing to the tips of his ears, and, from what little he could see of it, Clark's expression seemed to be waging a war between elation and being distraught; it rested at an interesting conglomeration of the two and was poorly hidden by Bruce’s hands. When Clark finally spoke up the sound was so jarring, so destructive to the silence that had been consuming the space between them, that Bruce actually, visibly flinched and shook loose the tears that had been camped on the edges of his trembling lashes.

"Correct me if I’m wrong," Clark said, his voice shaking with uncertainty and what Bruce thought might be a silent plea, "but was all that your way of telling me you...love me?"

Lowering Bruce’s hands from resting against his forehead to hold to his chest instead, his thumbs brushing against the back of Bruce's knuckles and sending jolts up each of his arms, Clark’s eyes pierced Bruce’s with such striking hope that it stole the air right out of Bruce’s lungs. Ah yes—he was drowning again, but this time in his once-dead fantasy that he might not be alone in his feelings.

Bruce could feel Clark’s heart pounding inside his chest, the beat a soft, gentle rhythm against his curled fingers.

"Y...Yes," Bruce replied, uncaring to the disaster that was his wide-eyed, wet, flustered face, too focused on the brightest smile he had ever seen breaking out on Clark’s face to care he had it out on display for the world to see.

Next thing he knew Clark had wrapped his large, warm body around him in a loving embrace and actually lifted them both off the ground, twirling midair like some elated, weightless dance that Bruce had never thought he’d get to share with Clark. When he brought them back down to Earth Clark sat on the other man’s bed and set Bruce down in his lap to hug him tightly from behind, burying his face, currently splitting from smiling too much, against the back of Bruce’s neck.

"I never thought—I mean, I never dreamed you would love me too," Clark whispered dreamily, the heat of his breath tickling Bruce’s skin and making him shiver.

Treading carefully so as not to misread the situation for even a second, Bruce slowly asked, “You...love me back?”

Letting out a huff that was no more than a quiet, private laugh, Clark rested his chin against Bruce’s shoulder to look at the other directly, his eyes swirling with delight. “B, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s been waiting to be loved back all this time,” he said with a grin, as if to challenge Bruce to contradict his statement.

Well, two could play at that game.

Quickly and efficiently wiping his face of tears and taking a deep breath to pull himself together, Bruce looked right into those impossibly blue eyes and asked with a curious lift of his brow, “Where’s your evidence of that?”

"Right here," Clark said, and shifted just enough to press his lips deeply against Bruce’s, the two of them so lost in each other that neither noticed the sound of crinkling paper.

As it so happened, the letter had been good for letting his ‘romantic frustration out’, with the added bonus of being able to let it out on who Bruce had wanted to from the very beginning. He had never dreamed that taking his son’s advice would have brought him to where he was now, disheveling Clark’s dark, wavy hair as he discovered he tasted of chocolate and raspberries, yet here he was.

Perhaps it was time to get Tim that game system he’d been asking for.

The kid earned it.

 

 


End file.
